Tag Archives: Richard Hakluyt

The year was 1607, Mary Queen of Scotts only son was king of England, Scotland and Ireland and on the north bank of The Haven Boston Lincolnshire the Scrooby Separatists later to be known as The Pilgrim Fathers made their first attempt to escape and seek religious freedom.

Also the first English settlement in the New World in Jamestown Virginia North America had just been established. Among the hundred and five men who set sail from London a year earlier was a Lincolnshire son named John Smith of Willoughby, he was responsible for establishing trading links with the American Indians.

It was during this time that he was captured by a group of Indians who murdered some of his companions and threatened to execute him but according to the story John Smith told he was rescued from this fate by the intervention of the eleven year old Pocahontas who pleaded for his life.

John Smith became president of Virginia in 1608 returning to England in 1609.